We headed to Cas' last night for an indoor freestyle fix. It's been a long time since I was there last, and I haven't ridden since I was last at the Chill FactorE, when I slammed pretty hard on my back. Probably a little rusty, and out of shape... I gotta do something about that.
The drive down there was a bit of a set back; we got stuck in traffic and ended up being over an hour late - leaving us just under 3 hours to ride. Not good when you have to pay for either 2 hours or 4 hours on a freestyle night...
Or not! We were hit with a pleasant suprise when we arrived - you can now opt for a 3 hour ticket at £30 (2 hours @ £25 and 4 hours @ £35). Bonus! It's probably been like that for ages, but hey, when was the last time I was there? Things were starting to look up.
And the set up - it was pretty fresh. OK, so the kickers were rubbish, but a good indoor kicker seems to be the exception rather than the norm, and I've known that for a while. They had the long flat (10m?) rail out, which is always good. Plus the long box and a short down rail. Both the flat rail and the box are ride on (if you want to), but the down rail was raised so you need to ollie on - the proper way.
There was also a rather nice spine/jib setup, with a huge, fat pipe serving as the coping - for want of a better description. A picture here would have been cool, but I didn't take any cameras - shame.
Despite being a while since I've snowboarded, I did try a few things that turned out quite nice. A half cab to 50-50 on the long rail; I made my first attempt at that and then all the ones after didn't measure up. A tight little frontside 3 mute; small, but I liked it 'cos I've never grabbed mute on a front 3 before.
Mart and I put the spine-jib to good use. I don't really know how to describe it, but my best effort was a frontside rotation to press/boardslide along the pipe and a 270 off, landing on the other side of the spine. That jib was real fun all night long.
I'd been hoping that the small amount of time I've been trying to do frontside boardslides on my skateboard was going to help me out with getting something frontside on a rail/box. My inability to do front-boards is in my opinion (and probably most others), a major failing. I feel like until I get this down, I suck on rails. So I want to sort it out.
I had marginal success on the box, but nothing worth writing about (ha!). I really do need to file my edges down, mind. Even if it's just to stop me thinking about it - 'cos I caught quite a few heel edges while sliding backwards, not good. Luckily I wasn't going fast enough for it to be a problem. It wasn't until I unpacked my bag when I got home that I found the file that had eluded me earlier on when getting all my gear ready. Bummer.
I'd spent a bit of time on the side-kicker-rail, which is the first of it's kind that I've tried (I think). Just a 50-50 was daunting at first. I tried some board slides, getting some contact before dropping off again. I decided that I wasn't committing enough, so towards the end of the session I went for a full on, rail-dead-central-between-bindings, boardslide. I caught an edge and went head first to the landing, fast. My left shoulder took all of the impact, and I was immediately aware that it was a nasty slam.
Memories of James' broken collarbone came flooding back. Luckily for me though, it only felt like I'd broke something, as far as I can tell everything is still intact (whimp!). Boy did it hurt though. It's pretty damn sore today, stiff, and I've got a lot of restriceted movement - although I did manage to drive the car, moving up the gears is ok, but changing down is hard.
Still, at least I committed to the rail :)
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